September 2010

September 26, 2010

Five minutes into David Fincher's movie about the birth and gnarled development of Facebook, “The Social Network,” you get the picture of founder Mark Zuckerberg trying to impress his girlfriend by putting her down. Clueless, he doesn't get why she picks up and leaves calling him an Asshole. We get it though, and ponder how this ill-adjusted kid got into Harvard in the first place. Said to have studied people with Asperger's Syndrome in order to play this part, Jesse Eisenberg frowns his way through a movie that many hail as the “Network” of the new media.

Surely there must be some joy in grimacing all the way to the bank!

“The Social Network” was a brilliant choice for the opening of the New York Film Festival, a sign that something is going right with the festival's direction under the new executive director, Rose Kuo. In due course, filing past fans lining the sidewalk at Lincoln Center hoping for a glimpse of Justin Timberlake who plays Napster founder Sean Parker, a thousand or so guests made their way to The Harvard Club for a lavish party. Abuzz on 3 floors, this venerable wood-lined institution returned the gloss and glamour to this special festival's opening night. I for one was grateful to see the words Black Tie Optional on the invite: no matter that fashion went from tux to tattered jeans.

As to Facebook and its founder, let the lawsuits take their course. That guests included the real Winklevoss twins still in court with Zuckerberg even after receiving a $65 million settlement was a reminder, there is a larger story out there waiting for a good documentary, about a phenomenon bigger than the attention-grabbing scandals. Where is all this money coming from? What will become of personal privacy? Who are the Facebook users: are they as lonely as Zuckerberg appears to be, truly connected to millions of friends, happy that others know their relationship status? I started out agreeing with Betty White on SNL when she quipped, “What a waste of time,” even as the social network revived her career. I end up wondering how long I can hang out hopelessly old school

September 25, 2010

A long time has passed since the sound “d'jew” could be heard in a conversation between characters played by Tony Roberts and Woody Allen in a Woody Allen movie. In his latest romantic tragedy, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” Allen's Judaism is so distant, it is a presence in absence. In a string of films, magic, chance, the playful machinations of the Greek gods supplant conventional religion, and in Tall Dark Stranger, a character's fate is in the hands of a fortuneteller. The auteur may be through with God, but suffering, now that's another story. At a recent press conference, he explained that he'd had a debate with Billy Graham about believing in God and Graham insisted that he would have a better life, even if Graham's belief were wrong. Allen said, he preferred work as a distraction to morbidity. “I can control work problems like what should I do if Josh Brolin can't do my movie?” Brolin, seated nearby chuckled loudly.

At ninety-nine, photojournalist Ruth Gruber is sharp as the proverbial tack. At a special screening of a new documentary about her life, Ahead of Time she told a rapt audience about going below on the Exodus and shooting the squalid conditions of the refugees huddled in the famed embargoed boat hoping to make their way to Israel. At a delicious dinner hosted by the film's co-producer Patti Kenner at her Park Avenue home, and prepared under the auspices of another producer, Doris Schechter whose cookbook, “My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook” is like a Bible to me, Dr.Ruth Westheimer, Tovah Feldshuh, Marie Brenner, and many others celebrated with Gruber and director Bob Richman. Among the most “heimish” of women in New York, Kenner and Schecter can invite me anytime.

Another heimish woman, Gertrude Berg a pioneer in the world of television sit-coms, is back. After a thrilling year in theatrical release, Aviva Kempner's excellent documentary, “Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is now on DVD with extras: Berg's guest appearances with Edward R. Murrow and on Ed Sullivan, her recipe for chicken in the pot with kneidlach. Yum!

Gershon David Hundert editor in chief of the indispensable Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe has now succeeded in creating a superb all-inclusive website: see www.yivoencyclopedia.org.

September 24, 2010

A scheduling glitch created the following conundrum: Best Generation poet and Allen Ginsberg's longtime mate, Peter Orlovsky, who died in June, was remembered on Wednesday at St. Mark's Church. Meanwhile the New York premiere of “Howl,” the new movie starring James Franco with Peter (Aaron Tveit) in a small role took place a few blocks across town at the IFC Center. Having filled the prestigious slot of opening night film at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the anticipation was high for this movie: part animation, part courtroom drama, part period piece about the creation of the iconic beat poem and the censorship trial for obscenity that followed its 1956 City Lights publication.

An event in beat style, the memorial featured performances by Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Gordon Ball, Bob Rosenthal, Hal Willner, Simon Pettet, Rosebud Pettet, Ed Sanders and anecdotes remembering Peter's generosity of spirit and obsession with cleanliness by Juanita Lieberman Plimpton who as a teen fell in love with this much older poet. Anne Waldman accompanied by her son Ambrose Bye brought down the house with readings of Orlovsky's poems. Peter Orlovsky penned the poetry volume, Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs, encouraged by Ginsberg to write. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg scholar, author of the recently released “The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation” (Free Press), and co-editor with David Stanford of “Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters” (Viking) also spoke. The correspondence reveals the sweet and sometimes belligerent Orlovsky on every page-he's called Petey-- in his role as muse and significant other.

Robert Frank and others, poets and beat luminaries looked on. Frank was co-director of the iconic “Pull My Daisy,” that black and white gem epitomizing the aesthetics of spontaneity that so defined the beat movement. Jack Kerouac was narrator, exercising his bebop prosody while Ginsberg took on the movements of a cockroach and intoned Holy Holy Holy before a bewildered bishop and his family played by Milo O'Shea and the painter Alice Neel. Another painter, the horn playing Larry Rivers also starred in the beat classic along with David Amram, Gregory Corso and Orlovsky. Many at the memorial mentioned “the ghosts” that lingered in the church best known as a performance space for them all.

The new movie “Howl” to its credit and poetic beauty maintains much of the downtown fervor of the beat post war urgency to create its own American language. Enacting the time when the use of such words as “cocksucker” could get you censored, “Howl,” the movie, illustrates how “Howl” was a landmark poem in its resistance to that violation of the First Amendment. The actual trial transcripts supply the dialogue, comic in today's world. Actor James Franco channels poet Allen Ginsberg in “Howl,” perhaps because the role reflects this Yale literature student's own passion for poetry.

Many at the Peter Orlovsky memorial scrambled for cabs to attend the “Howl” premiere after-celebration at Kastel at the elegant steel and chrome Trump Soho newly built on Spring and Varick, sponsored by Maestro Dobel Tequila and Woolrich Woolen Mills. You have to wonder what Allen and Peter would have thought of the uptown feel. Some poets simply boycotted the party in protest of this sleek edifice: there goes the neighborhood. For his part, Peter might have appreciated the establishment's cleanliness.

September 19, 2010

Lawrence Wright, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” is also a performer/ playwright. Wanting to tell the backstory of writing his book, he created “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” a one man stage play performed at The Culture Project. The film version directed by the Academy Award winning documentarian Alex Gibney premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now airing on HBO-timely programming for the anniversary of 9/11.

Speaking about his attraction to this interesting and provocative story, Gibney noted that Lawrence Wright's journey into the Middle East shows the threat that we face: how dangerous it is in facing that threat that we are becoming more like the terrorists than we imagine.

“My Trip to Al-Qaeda” begins with Wright's travels to Cairo, and with a history of violence involving a movie Wright scripted, “The Siege,” starring Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis. In early September, I had the opportunity to talk to Lawrence Wright about his work.

Q: You have a strange destiny to have to tell this story from “The Siege” to “My Trip to Al-Qaeda.” Do you see the provocation in these films as relevant today?

The current mosque controversy echoes the controversy about “The Siege.” I was proud of the movie, which was, by the way, a box office failure. Just as there was a campaign against “The Siege,” now there is a controversy with more heat around it. Poor Muslims. I find myself in an oddly neutral spot. As in the case of the cartoons in Holland depicting Mohammed like pig having intercourse with a dog, the character of the people involved is distorted by the right wing.

[Wright's makes this comparison in the “Talk of the Town” section of the current New Yorker.]

Islam is religion of peace, and both sides on the mosque controversy are reprehensible because they have created a self-defeating strife where there should be a bridge for understanding. There is room for flexibility. The Muslim center has a perfect right to be there.

Q: What about the Wikileaks?

As a reporter aware that documents have been hidden, I am glad that the information is coming out. I am concerned that the information is inadequately vetted and people may die or go to prison. Afghan lives are in danger.

Q: Can you tell me how the film evolved from the stage play to film to television?

I was performing the play at the Kennedy Center. Alex Gibney had an idea about how the play could become more cinematic, could go out into the world. HBO is the best possible place for this film. They have courage.

Q: So, are you more writer or actor?

When Matt Damon and Robert DiNiro came to see me in the play, I felt that I was blessed by the tribe. I know I am not an actor in the way that they are. I was working in a novel form, non-fiction theater, communicating what I learned and experienced as a journalist.

Q: Is your new play in the same genre?

Yes, I'm doing it again. I am writer and performer of “The Human Scale,” part of the New Yorker Festival on October 2. A co-production with The Public Theater, the work is interesting and gratifying. Print. Stage. Film. Each has a unique domain. This play derives from my New Yorker story on Gaza and the capture of an Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and how that event has led to war and a blockade. It would be a great thing for Israel and Hamas to be pressured to make a deal. Of course Hamas wants 1400 prisoners, some of them murderers, to be released in exchange for the one Israeli soldier.

Q: Are you working on anything else?

My band Whodo played in Washington on Sept. 11 at a club called Madame's Organ. It's a rockabilly and blues band. I am on keyboard. The fiddler is 15 year old and tours with Willy Nelson. Daunting.

September 17, 2010

If you are a cook, there is a nail-biting sequence in the new movie, Jack Goes Boating, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman under his own direction, adapted from the stage play by Bob Glaudini that was such a hit at the Public Theater last year. In this astonishingly tender movie, wanting to impress Connie (Amy Ryan) Jack learns to prepare an elegant dinner. Timing the pork chops to their perfection, he puffs on a hookah with friends Clyde and Lucy (John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega), and well, let's just say, much violence is done to a smoke alarm.

In the documentary Kings of Pastry now featured at Film Forum, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus follow a competition as rigorous and compelling as the U.S. Open. Pastry chefs contend for the Meilleurs Ouviers de France, that country's highest honor in the art of patisserie. Accomplished and passionate chefs gather in Lyon for three intense days of mixing, blowing, sculpting vast amounts of sugar, butter and eggs to create works of art. Pennebaker and Hegedus with cinematographer Nick Doob were allowed unprecedented access to this event. One wrong move and they could have destroyed a contestant's arduous efforts in winning the coveted three-color MOF collar.

This week's premiere party at Jacques Torres Chocolate was like an excursion to Candy Land. Jacquy Pfeiffer, one of the film's stars created a special pastry sculpture to mark the occasion. Looking closely you could see the intricacy of construction, ribbons of sprocketed film in thinly sliced chocolate. As this riveting documentary illustrates, making confectionary castles in the air is fraught with peril. One misstep carrying spun sugar out of the kitchen! Talk about drama!

September 14, 2010

As a teen, Harvey Weinstein worked at Apple Records with the responsibility to shepherd about a young band, The Beatles, he told the well-heeled guests at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room Sunday night. He introduced a new movie The Weinstein Company will release in time for John Lennon’s 70th birthday on October 8: Nowhere Boy.

In a case of corporate synergy, the stunning evening hosted by Montblanc was the global launch of the Montblanc John Lennon donation pen, and connected with similar launches in Berlin, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Mexico City. “Tonight we will make the world feel as one,” announced Montblanc CEO Lutz Bethge with Susan Sarandon by his side. He also affirmed a commitment by Montblanc to support education all over the world. Yoko Ono appeared on a large screen, live from Berlin’s Peace Tower to emphasize the message. In an important gesture, she spoke about allowing the Nowhere Boy filmmakers the rights to use the song, “Mother.” She mentioned yet another movie to open at the upcoming New York Film Festival limning his life in New York: Michael Epstein’s LennonNYC.

The launch’s invitation promised a special music guest. It was indeed a pleasure to hear Christina Aguilera’s cover of “Imagine,” accompanied by Linda Perry at the piano. Later, as the Allen Room’s scrim was lifted, the word was emblazoned across Central Park’s entrance on Columbus Circle, where Strawberry Fields remains nearby, a memorial to the dead Beatle. You could see the machinery in motion, celebrating, yet also creating a myth of this man. You could see Yoko Ono’s interest in sanctifying John. At the same time that one can be a tad cynical and wary of exploitation, the Montblanc John Lennon pens are truly magnificent art objects gorgeously designed, gem encrusted, -- they’d be a thrill for anyone to own.

The movie Nowhere Boy brought matters down to earth. Given that it is about an icon, large enough to be murdered by a madman and remembered in the way that everyone remembers those extraordinary moments: where you were when you heard, etc. this movie is small in the best sense. It tells the story of John’s youth, his highly confused parentage, dramatizing his brutish behavior and also revealing the sources of his most tender songs. A family story, Nowhere Boy features wonderful performances by the two women, his spirited birth mother Julia (a dynamic Anne-Marie Duff) and the aunt who raised him (the splendid Kristin Scott Thomas). This is the story of a young man whose life is a rage against an adverse, sad childhood full of loss and identity issues. As the teen John Lennon, the actor Aaron Johnson sports a pompadour appropriate to a Liverpool lad seeking to become a rocker in the manner of Elvis, but in real life he wears Rimbaud-like waves. He and director Sam Taylor-Wood, a noted photographer who was wearing an Alexander McQueen cocktail dress at the posh opening are recent parents and in between speaking to reporters and greeting Christian Siriano and Alan Cummings, they worried how their six-week old daughter fared in her hotel room. Already out in England, the movie has had only modest success, Johnson said, because it opened the same day as Sherlock Holmes and Avatar. Harvey Weinstein recounted an early Nowhere Boy review: Sir Paul McCartney said he loved the movie, finding fault only with the casting of Paul: He was much more handsome.

September 05, 2010

Did I detect a note of jealousy at Guild Hall where the Q&A following the screening of Last Play at Shea? The documentary traces the demolition of the famed ball park and home of the Mets through the history of rock performed there, from a legendary Beatles concert back in the day to Paul McCartney's joining Billy Joel for Shea's last play.

Alec Baldwin, board member of the Hamptons International Film Festival and Hamptons resident at large lauded Billy Joel to the skies for his artistry, musicianship, and with a little help from the audience, for his menschlechkeit. Lorraine Bracco wanted to know how Joel survived Hicksville High, and the piano man talked about his interest in boosting the arts and music programs in public education. But then the true source of Baldwin's envy came out-the gorgeous blond sitting in the back wearing a black fedora.

I saw you at a concert, said the 30 Rock star to the rock star. Your ex-wife Christie Brinkley was cheering you on. You would ask, hey Christie, where were we when I wrote this song? I don't have that kind of relationship with my ex, where she would buy a ticket to see me. In fact, I have something like the Empire State Building shoved up my ass. To which Billy shouted out, hey Christie, did you really buy a ticket?

And it was not just a show of humility: it is safe to say that the evening proved there is always someone perceived as better, someone, in fact, to envy, and he lives nearby. Boasting about the invitation, the stars were off to Amagansett, to a party chez Sir Paul.

*****

In Kenny Solms's play, “It Must Be Him,” that opened this week at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, an L.A.-based writer Louie (Peter Scolari) with at least one Emmy under his belt, hasn't had a hit in twenty years. A nebbish with the soul of a rock star, Louie's psychic underpinnings get played out in this very funny revue: His dead mom (Alice Playten) and dad (Bob Ari) haunt--er, visit-regularly. Patrick Cummings provides eye candy in the standout role as Louie's “roommate” and the campy Edward Staudenmayer is hilariously well-hung (prosthetics, he said). At the afterparty at 48 Lounge, Anjelica Huston swiveled on a barstool, to chat with Phyllis Newman and Joan Rivers. A fan told Huston how she loved Prizzi's Honor to wit she replied gamely, “You just like bad girls.”

September 02, 2010

A handsome Rare Prince posed for photographers on the lawn of Goose Creek last Monday, for what might have been an advertisement for the coming Hampton Classic. The occasion was instead a special screening of Disney's thrilling biopic about the legendary Secretariat. Among his many distinctions, this stud sired some six hundred foals, and Rare Prince, the evening's guest of honor, is his great grandson. In the grand tradition of epic, state of the arts entertainments so perfected at Disney, Secretariat features superb performances by Diane Lane as the racehorse's owner, Penny Chenery, and John Malkovich as the eccentric trainer Lucien Laurin sporting an array of hats worthy of Fashion Week.Dick Cavett and the lovely Martha Rogers, painter Henry Koehler who was at the racetrack when Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973, Toni Ross, Candice Bergen and daughter Chloe Malle were among those munching on popcorn, crackers and cheese, which at a fun family movie like this--if you will pardon me--ain't hay. Argentinian Nacho Figueras was a natural for pictures with Rare Prince. The star polo player told me that Secretariat's story was popular lore in his home country as he was growing up, and he dreamed that he might one day ride such an exceptional racehorse.

Another highlight of the busy Hamptons weekend: Davis Guggenheim'sWaiting for Superman screened in Southampton. This riveting documentary examines education in America, specifically a lottery for admission to charter schools that was also the subject of another fine non-fiction film, The Lottery, earlier this year. Waiting for Superman traces the lives of several families in a nail-biting bid for the special, excellent education offered at key charter schools. Of course the question arises as to how to provide quality education for everyone, not just those kids lucky to have their numbers picked out of a bingo bowl. One comes away knowing: stepping up education is an imperative for our survival. The title's source comes at the end with a clip from the television series featuring George Reeves as the Man of Steel to the rescue with a runaway school bus. Of course that dates from the 1950's when our public education was the finest in the world. Waiting for Superman limns this bleak story of education's devolution, and spotlights the heroic tale of teachers who rise above it.